


can't steal happiness

by satellites (brella)



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 04:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/646723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, Britta and Jeff's slow and inexorable descent into domesticity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	can't steal happiness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [usoverlooked](https://archiveofourown.org/users/usoverlooked/gifts).



There are two small squares of space on the coffee table, among the haphazard papers and magazine cologne samples and takeout menus, where they put their feet when they’re watching TV. Britta’s is just an inch or so smaller in area than Jeff’s, but that’s just because Jeff has freakishly large feet and she doesn’t take up space like some kind of self-satisfied throw pillow that smells like almonds.   
  
The day after Christmas, six months after their graduation from Greendale, Greenwich Village is freezing and the heater is out. Jeff, never one to soil himself by  _fixing_  things, because it would take way too much effort, resigns himself to walking around the apartment wrapped up in enough wool and cashmere to suffocate someone. (Pierce had given him bright red wool socks for Christmas, saying they would get him laid, but lately they’ve just been getting him to slip on the hardwood floor whenever he tries to move.)  
  
Nobody wants to come and fix the heater because they’re all gearing up for the New Year and the dropping ball, and honestly, walking out to try and buy some fixy-things during all of the after-Christmas sales? Britta might not consider herself to be the brightest specimen evolution-wise, but at the very least she isn’t freaking suicidal.   
  
Britta’s not going to get mushy or anything, but it’s actually a nice few days. Neither of them leaves the apartment because neither of them starts work again until after New Year’s and the shelter in Queens where Britta volunteers is closed for the holidays. So they sit on the couch with their feet on the table and their elbows tactfully apart, covered in the contents of the blanket fort kit Abed had given them as a holiday gift.   
  
They watch a lot of  _The X-Files_  (the good ones, the retro ones, with Scully's wicked fashion sense) and  _Cheers_  during the day, and when the sun goes down and the cold really kicks in, they get a little drunk on leftover eggnog and watch  _Days of Our Lives_ , and one time Jeff makes Britta laugh so hard that the nog comes out her nose and she almost pees herself.   
  
And maybe they fall asleep like that, bundled and curled in on themselves, her head nestled against the dip of his collarbone and his arm slung at her hip, and maybe these are the mornings when they’ll wake up and not jump apart, because they’ve been living together, here, for three of those six months, after Jeff had shown up at the door of her apartment with, like, six suitcases full of hipster crap and his PS3 and his mint collection of Spider-Man comics and had written it off as him “being in town.”   
  
Sometimes she wakes up before him (and that’s only if he’s really, really hung over, because most of the time he’s up at six to go jogging with his nipple guards and his iPod of Toto). She pries her eyes apart and feels his breath skirting across the nape of her neck, hears him mumble sleepily to himself and tighten his arm’s grasp around her waist on an instinct she doesn’t want to examine. And she realizes, holy crap, this is totally and for real happening; she and Jeff Winger are living together in Greenwich Village and he doesn’t laugh at how she pronounces “bagel” anymore and when she wakes up in the morning swearing like a sailor, he always hands her a mug of coffee without a word, like he’d made it for the both of them.   
  
Her mugs are all from banks where she’d tried to take out loans, or they’re from PETA (that was a dark time, supporting PETA, but hey, mugs!), or there’s one with Oscar the Grouch on it that says “I Hate Mondays” and it’s all so stereotypical she could barf. She actually doesn’t mind Mondays. Mondays are nice. Mondays are almost always preceded by really good sex, because Jeff knows that she doesn’t like Mondays without it.   
  
“God,” she says on the last night before New Year’s Eve as the cold crawls across her skin and she sits with her knees raised beneath an old down comforter that still smells suspiciously of Starburns. “What have we become?”   
  
Jeff frowns and, after a moment, takes his gaze off of Marlena and John like he’d thought what she’d said had been a line of intrusive dialogue in the show itself.  
  
She bites her lip and keeps her eyes focused on the television screen.   
  
“Um,” Jeff replies. “Awesome roommates?”   
  
Britta finally wrenches her head to the right to give him a deadpan look. He grimaces.  
  
“With love,” he appends lamely. “And sex, lots of great sex, and cats. I let you keep the cats. That’s love.”   
  
“Oh, so you acknowledge that it’s love,” Britta says triumphantly, but Jeff eschews.  
  
“That depends,” he replies. “Do  _you_  acknowledge it?”   
  
“You cracked first, Winger.” Britta crosses her arms, scowling. “I’m the one in power now.”   
  
“Does this really have to be a fight?” Jeff asks in exasperation.   
  
“Yes, duh-doy,” Britta says, using the qualifier she hasn’t pulled out in months. “And I’m winning.”   
  
“Britta,” Jeff sighs, running a set of five deft fingers through his dumb crispy crumpled hair, “I don’t want this to be a… a contest anymore.”  
  
Britta frowns, her lips turning slightly down in perplexedness.  
  
“Then—” She gulps, inexplicably tight-chested all of a sudden. “Then what do you want it to be?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Jeff replies truthfully with that patented Winger shrug that makes his eyes go wide and bewildered, like he can’t believe he has to admit that he doesn’t have a solid position on something. “I just like waking up next to you and getting to be in charge of the remote.”   
  
“Oh my god,” Britta splutters, panicked. “The remote. In charge. Are we married?”   
  
“Uh…” Jeff lets out a hesitant hissing sound and bobs his head from side to side, squinting. “I guess that’s, uh – gonna be in your corner.”   
  
Britta’s heart sort of trips and bumps against her chest plate and falls flat on its face.   
  
“What,” she deadpans.   
  
“Us,” Jeff says, drawing out the word – totally stalling, keeping his eyes on the wall. “Staying like this. Sharing takeout. Having kids. I think the ring’s in the underwear drawer next to the Hello Kitty numbers.”   
  
“You were gonna propose to me with my Hello Kitty underwear?!” Britta squawks.   
  
“Nice priorities,” Jeff says dryly, curling his lip at her. “Forget it. Let’s just watch these soap opera stars get boners for improbable drama.”   
  
By all accounts, if Britta is truly the Britta she’s been ever since that guy in the dinosaur costume had set his eyes on her, she should let him forget it. She should call his bluff, get edgy, get nervous, bolt out at two in the morning and leave him only with a puff of her granola-nut smell and a pair of her lacy underwear. She should board a plane to Somewhere and tell herself not to expect him to run after her.   
  
But Jeff, god damn him, has turned her on her head. Again. She doesn’t know which Britta she is now except the Britta that hides her smiles in the early morning when she quietly rolls over to watch him doze open-mouthed beside her.  
  
“I don’t—” She swallows the dry lump in her throat and suddenly she can breathe again. “Wanna forget.”  
  
Jeff’s head turns slowly to her and he shifts enough that his body warmth starts to fill the gap of cold air beside her hip.   
  
She stares straight ahead, refusing to let herself see his expression, the heavy and heart-beaten things behind his so typically self-assured eyes.   
  
She remembers, some indistinct amount of time ago, nearly getting married to him under an awning of twinkling lights and flower arrangements. She remembers something stirring in the pit of her stomach at his cracking, raw shouting about his daddy breaking promises to his mommy, and she remembers seeing the wetness in his eyes even from her seat, and she remembers the number she’d wanted him to pick:  _two and a cat_.   
  
“I mean,” she adds, much more feebly than she’d planned. “Good for taxes, right?”  
  
“Woman,” Jeff says quietly, in the kind of tone that makes it difficult to tell if he means what he’s saying or not but that always betrays that there’s a delighted unbalance somewhere in that locked-down lawyer heart, “you are the love of my life.”   
  
“Your standards must be pretty low,” Britta mutters wryly, smiling the same smile she’d given him at the transfer dance years ago, unusually afraid and overjoyed and tender for someone so brash at every edge.   
  
“Excuse me,” he retorts, and his fingers gently push her hair out of the way and she doesn’t bang her head on a bunk bed this time. “Winger taste is  _guaranteed_  golden.”   
  
“Oh, screw you,” Britta choke-laughs, for no apparent reason.   
  
Jeff takes her chin in one hand and tilts it toward him, and he kisses her, and Britta pulls the blankets over both of their heads while he manages to fumble at the remote enough to mute the television set.   
  
Britta could tie it up with a ribbon and stick it under a tree, right here, right now. But she wants to watch it grow, and she wants to grasp a different mug handle every morning, and she wants to fight over wall paint colors and watch Jeff stealthily fawn over kittens at the shelter when he comes to pick her up.   
  
She wants to hold it in her hands, but she’ll never be playing keepaway with it again. (Even if Jeff  _does_  use up all the hot water, the conceited douche.)

**Author's Note:**

> To hopefully cheer up Libby at least a little bit. I may or may not have a lot of gratuitous headcanons about what domestic life would be with these two.


End file.
